The present invention relates to mainframe event and message processing in general and, in particular, to the creation and monitoring of records related thereto. Mainframes, in the course of operation, create and monitor a variety of events and other messages (e.g., syslog messages), which contain various information regarding mainframe operations. These records may be analyzed for a variety of purposes. A mainframe may assign specific codes to the event or other messages depending on the triggering circumstance, and also may provide access to the stored records.
The information contained within the mainframe event records may be valuable to third party applications. For example, by analyzing event record codes and event information, third parties may be able to identify various conditions and processing incidents on and recorded by the mainframe. This event record information may disclose a security violation detected on the mainframe system, a mainframe memory issue, an application error, or a variety of other mainframe operations and processing incidents.
In many instances, the high number, variety, and frequency of events recorded on the mainframe make it difficult for third parties to use this information efficiently. Also, the information contained in an event record is in a mainframe specific character encoding (e.g., EBCDIC). Finally, third parties seeking to use event record information are confronted with challenges in interfacing with the mainframe because of the complexity and security.